The trouble started in the early hours, just past 3am AEDT, when Microsoft’s Exchange Online servers began failing. By the time most of the country sat down at its desk, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Copilot were all down. Downdetector logged more than 120,000 Outlook reports worldwide by 4.30am, and Australian reports climbed from more than 2,500 at 7.30am to about 5,000 by 9am.
Microsoft said a number of servers had become unavailable after failing automated health checks, leaving the remaining infrastructure to carry the load. Its early fixes did not hold and at the time of writing, the MS suite of virtual software on which almost all global commerce operates was out to lunch.
Service NSW, Queensland Health, NSW Parliament and several state and territory governments were hit. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were also affected, and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the government had activated an agreement with Microsoft to prioritise Australian restoration. Burke said Microsoft had told him it did not believe a cyber attack was behind the failure.
The mortgage industry was not spared. The Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) posted a notice on its website that its systems were running but the outage was affecting its ability to receive emails.
Across the Tasman, settlements were disrupted badly enough that the New Zealand Law Society suggested lawyers temporarily use alternatives such as text messages (the horror!) – while verifying any new contact details through a known phone number.
